Bedrock

Archive for the ‘Sagra’ Category

We didn’t MEAN to end up at Santiago de la Espada, the idea was to take a drive and go down the first road we’d never explored. Well it wasn’t until we got to Puebla de Don Fadrique that the opportunity to do just that happened.

We’ve been round mount Sagra many times but never ventured off to the right – so, armed with petrol and good weather, off we went. The road isnt’ ideal – it’s a tortuous, mountainside route and it took us longer than Google would suggest – but I have to say, well worthwhile – the scenery out there in the mountains (not to mention the HEIGHT) is pretty spectacular. And the coffee in the village wasn’t bad either.

And so off we went – and spent the afternoon simply adventuring. We came back via another route avoiding Don Fadrique but to be honest the road was a little dodgy so I won’t recommend it other than to say the scenery in both directions is marvellous. Here are some photos.

Having open fires is not something you’d do in Spain in the summer – and in fact some forms of BBQ are banned from June 1st to save burning the whole place down!

And so it was we set off around the back of Sagra near Pueblo De Don Fadrique for a BBQ – it’s around 26c in the shade and has been most of the day and deep in the woods is a cracking area for BBQs complete with stone tables and chairs – as it happens our small group were the only ones around so we had the whole place to ourselves, including a very picturesque nearby church. I’m writing this around teatime having spent the whole afternoon down there, around 12 of us.

As pictures in these situations are more important than words, I’ll let the pictures do the job. Click on any smaller ones to enlarge.

The afternoon ended with a visit by a herd of goats – which was fun!

For those of you who’re in the area on holiday or staying here I’ve created a twitter feed you can follow if you’re interested. I’ll put in updates about what’s going on – if you know of anything in the area I don’t – please do comment.

www.twitter.com/cavehome

Well, we set off as planned off to Puebla De Don Fadrique and after a brief look around went up the long and winding road to Mr Sagra. I have to say, the road is narrow and windy and takes you all the way around the back of the mountain and ultimately back into the backend of Huescar, but it’s worth the trip – especially at this time of the year, the colours of the trees out there contrasting the blue sky and mountain were tremendous. By the time we got to around 4,500ft the temperature had dropped from something like 17c to 10c!

We don’t get colours like this in the UK and according to Maureen it’s something to do with sugar and the sun – but the result is entire trees almost glowing bright yellow, or orange and in some cases red – absolutely amazing colours.

The round trip took most of the morning and then we stopped off in Huescar for coffee, Galera pizzeria for lunch and then back to the cave for Maureen to do some gardening work – which I repair the second bust sat-nav of the week, this time, Maureen had a replacement phone – and when we re-installed the navigator on it, we never thought twice about it until now…. it wanted a licence key. Got back here, put the key in and then it wanted an upgrade key. Not having that I rang up support who told me that we had the wrong maps!! So, right now we’ve half way through the download…   it’s a good job we have unlimited (if a little slow) broadband here – the download is 1.2 gigabytes – about half of the monthly allowance of some mobile devices!!  Had this been our only sat-nav and we’d been on mobile broadband, that would have kyboshed some of our travel (though I have to say by now I can find my way around pretty well without it most of the time).

By tonight, the download (and my unfeasibly long iPad backup) should be done if the electricity holds up (failed twice today, just for a second but long enough for me to lose the connection). Today was warm but not super warm, tomorrow promises to be better.